Preview
LILY, LOTUS AND CATERPILLARS
Maymee Ying Lum
Runs until April 11
The New Gallery
Today’s fashion trends do not typically lead to deformity, broken bones or life-long pain, but that has not always been the case.
Artist Maymee Ying Lum casts a light on the now-banned Chinese tradition of feet-binding in her most recent exhibition at The New Gallery entitled Lily, Lotus and Caterpillars.
"Feet-binding is a practice that lasted a thousand years," says Lum.
The binding of feet reportedly began in 10th century China during the Tang Dynasty. Emperor Li Yu had one of his palace concubines bind her feet with silk while she danced for him on a floor covered with lotus flowers.
With time, this ritual evolved to the point where the majority of China’s elite would have the feet of their female children bound. The goal was to make the feet as small as possible in order to be more esthetically appealing. To achieve this appearance, bones in the girls’ feet were broken and their toes tucked underneath. Their feet were then bound with strips of cloth to keep them at approximately three-and-a-half inches in length, the size of a Golden Lotus Flower. The children, disabled by this process, would then spend their time making tiny and elaborately embroidered shoes for themselves, commonly known as Lotus or Lily Shoes.
Although feet-binding ended in 1911 under the rule of the New Chinese Republic, Lum was inspired to find out more about the tradition after discovering a more recent and personal connection.
"My mother’s grandmother had her feet bound," says Lum. "I never met her but my mother told me stories about it."
The result is an exhibit made up of a series of untitled installations. Lum has altered the appearance of an array of shoes by wrapping colourful satin cloth around them or by dipping the toes of assorted boots, runners and high heels in chocolate. It’s a not-too-gentle reminder that the real and perceived pressures to decorate ourselves for the approval of others did not end during the time of the Chinese Emperors.
"It’s about what we (women) put ourselves through to achieve that," says Lum.
And as if to firmly reject those same conventions, Lum includes in another corner of the gallery a line of photographs that show feet of all shapes, sizes and colours. Each set of "naked" feet is carefully documented by Lum in order to celebrate this part of the human body, free of adornment.
Another installation consists of cast feet of paraffin wax that Lum made using a variety of acquaintances as models. The casts have been carefully arranged in lines like precious pieces of porcelain. One wax foot in particular stands out from the rest. Small and deformed – not because of binding, but most certainly the result of a birth defect – the contorted foot is not repulsive but remains a radiant object of beauty. |
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